I received an email from a developer at Carina Software; they’re celebrating the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing by offering all their downloadable software for free! This includes their SkyVoyager iPhone app, which I know is very popular. I have never used their software, so I cannot vouch for it, recommend it, tell you to stay away, or whatever. But I do know a lot of folks like the stuff Carina puts out, and I’ll be downloading SkyVoyager myself.

This offer is for Monday only! So grab ’em while you can; SkyVoyager is usually $15. Just to be clear, I’m not endorsing this product, just letting y’all know about a freebie.

Hmm… there is always a catch: “[U]ntil you register your copy, Voyager will only display a small portion of the objects in its database, will not control a telescope, and will not recieve [sic] data or program updates.”

Yeah, I think only the SkyVoyager iPhone app is the only freebie today. Alas, I don’t have an iPhone, but would like the regular, computer-based Voyager. It would compliment by Starry Night Pro program.

Unfortunately it is only available in the development version (which won’t be readily available until January of next year) and there is no stable version for windows or mac yet (only Linux so far, although windows and mac ports are underway).

Yeah for both Skygazer and Voyager links (if you click “order” – otherwise there doesn’t appear to be any way to download a usable version), they have the following message:
—
TEMPORARILY DISABLED – Due to unexpectedly high volume, this download has been disabled at the request of our webhosting provider. We are working with our hosting provider to resolve this problem. Serial numbers will be emailed to all customers who have purchased them.
—

Otherwise, if I’m wrong and those two pieces of PC/Mac software AREN’T actually being offered for free at all, then I want my five minutes back. lol. Saying that they’re offering “free software” is a bit over the top, if in the end, all they’re in fact offering is an app for the iPhone.

“Due to overwhelming (and unexpected!) demand, we’ve had to make some changes to this one-time event.

First, our iPhone apps SkyVoyager and SkyGazer will continue to be free downloads from the iTunes app store all day long. No changes there!

At approximately 6:20 AM PDT this morning, we recieved a call from our web-hosting provider, bluehost.com, asking us to suspend the one-cent download offer for our Voyager and SkyGazer desktop software. Demand was so high that our automated serial-number generator, which emails serial numbers to customers, was sending out several thousand emails per hour – putting us in violation of our Terms of Service (TOS) agreement, and causing our email service to be suspended.

Our email has been restored, and we are catching up on our backlog of missing-serial-number emails manually. All customers who have purchased one-cent downloadable copies of SkyGazer and Voyager should recieve their serial numbers from us by the close of business today, Monday, July 20th, 2009.

After continued discussion with our web-hosting provider, it is unlikely that we will be able to continue providing our desktop software as one-cent downloads for the remainder of the day. If this situation changes, we will let you know here, first.

As mentioned above, our iPhone apps SkyVoyager and SkyGazer will continue to be free downloads from the iTunes app store all day long.”

I would have actually used the programs had I been able to download them… Considering I’ve been in to astronomy for 25 years and don’t currently own any decent sky software, this wouldn’t have been a download for the sake of a free download.

But there are some who would probably have downloaded for the sake of it being free.

“At approximately 6:20 AM PDT this morning, we recieved a call from our web-hosting provider, bluehost.com, asking us to suspend the one-cent download offer for our Voyager and SkyGazer desktop software. Demand was so high that our automated serial-number generator, which emails serial numbers to customers, was sending out several thousand emails per hour – putting us in violation of our Terms of Service (TOS) agreement, and causing our email service to be suspended.”

Note to self: Should I ever need to host a commercial website, avoid bluehost.com like the plague.

This is exactly why I use GoDaddy and Rackspace – Everyone who has bluehost.com as their provider and hopes for a widely successful product should take a lesson from Carina’s software and find a new provider now!

I love Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/). Fantastic open-source software for exploring the night sky. There’s also Celestia, which may be out dated as it hasn’t been updated in a while. Celestia is more of a solar system browser than a sky viewer.

Stellarium’s strength is in being very very pretty. It simulates various lens distortions (fisheye, spherical, etc.) and has a library of historical constellations etc.

Celestia’s strength is in its extensibility. It’s highly customizable. You can add new objects to the universe in a pinch, perhaps creating a fantasy or theoretical star system of your own around arbitrary stars in the sky.

Thanks for the info, Phil! I jumped on this one like a duck on a June Bug!
I just tested it against Starry Night Pro and found the RA & Dec numbers, the distance to them, the mass, the apparent magnitude, the moon positions & names and the Alt/az data to be accurate for Jupiter, Neptune & Uranus!
W00T!
When I turn on the “realistic” Milky Way, it slows down a bit, but it’s pretty as all heck!
I have the 32GB iPod Touch, so there’s plenty of room for this one on there.

I downloaded the software, but when it came to getting the serial key, it was too late! I’m in an email conversation with Carina about it, but I’m not holding out too much hope. I’m thinking of going to the Better Business Bureau. Am I overreacting?